


our hands are cold, the moon sets low

by redbelles



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Blood Magic, Eldritch Horrors, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Jon Snow Knows Nothing, Post-Finale, Rebuilding, Slow Burn, The Long Night, The War for the Dawn, The Wolves Will Come Again, Trauma, except where to put it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:00:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbelles/pseuds/redbelles
Summary: The letter is short, a bare handful of words that burrow beneath her skin like slivers. She reads them over and over until they are carved into her heart, red as weirwood sap. Red as blood.Daenerys is dead. The North is free, and yours, as it should be. Take care of our family.Or: Jon and Sansa in the aftermath.





	1. Chapter 1

The dragon reaches them before the ravens do.

It is a vast black shape in the sky— it seems the whole of the castle falls under its shadow as it passes. Ankle-deep in the muck of the courtyard, Sansa watches as the smallfolk tremble, mothers hurrying to their children, men clutching their sweethearts, all of them so terribly afraid.

They are not the only ones. Brienne’s hand goes to the hilt of her sword, the fear on her face a match for the helpless, bitter fury winding through Sansa’s heart. There are many things the Lady of Winterfell can fight, but dragonfire is not one of them. Not now, not when they are still so shattered from the Long Night.

 _We’ve yet to finish burning the dead_ , she thinks faintly. Then: _I suppose that’s no longer a worry._

But the dragonfire never comes. There is no eerie roar, no blast of flame. The great wings beat steadily against the winter air, carrying the creature north over the First Keep, then further still, beyond the remnants of the outer walls, silent, silent. Sansa wrenches herself from her thoughts, staring at the great beast—the black, the largest of the Targaryen monsters—until her fear falls away. Clutched in those massive talons is a small figure, silver hair streaming out like a banner in the wind.

 _Oh_ , she thinks. Then: _Jon—_

 

 

 

 

The ravens come in flocks, an endless storm of dark wings. They bring news of a King’s Council, a city still smoldering, a throne that no longer exists. More arrive each day, until poor Sam’s desk is drowning in parchment as the realm tries to navigate a landscape turned shattered and strange.

She reads them all, cataloguing new alliances and broken treaties, tracking the shifting balance of power as the realm slowly splinters into independent kingdoms. The Seven Kingdoms are no more, and so Sansa reads each missive as it arrives, but finds she only cares for two.

One, from Arya, a hasty message that says _I’m alright. Bound for the Riverlands._ She knows the first for a lie and the second for the truth. Tales of a massive she-wolf and her murderous pack reached the Vale long before Sansa ever escaped King’s Landing. Arya is lost, but she’s always been a wolf; Sansa can only pray that Nymeria will help her find herself once more.

The other letter is equally short, a bare handful of words that burrow beneath her skin like slivers. She reads them over and over until they are carved into her heart, red as weirwood sap. Red as blood.

_Daenerys is dead. The North is free, and yours, as it should be. Take care of our family._

It is nothing Sansa does not already know: she saw the Dragon Queen’s body as her child bore it away, received raven upon raven addressing her as the Queen in the North. She knows Jon drove a dagger through his lover’s chest after she turned the city to ash. There should be a bitter triumph to it, knowing she was right. Instead, there is only the ache of grief.

Jon was not built for betrayal. He was a dreamer, just like she was. A boy who believed in honor, who wanted nothing more than the warmth of family. She knows that now. To lose that honor, to turn on that warmth— it is no wonder he chose to vanish.

There is a dark empty part of her where her songs used to live, a fledgling garden uprooted by Joffrey and Cersei and Petyr. Razed black, sown with salt under Ramsay Bolton’s tender care. Even now, safe within the walls of Winterfell, surrounded by the snows and fierce loyalty of the North, it stays dark, stays empty.

She understands. Truly, she does. That does not make it any easier to bear.

 

 

 

 

_You’ve left me_ , the emptiness howls. _Father and Mother and Robb and Lady and Rickon, all dead. Arya gone, Bran a stranger in my brother’s skin, and now you Jon, you as well. You’ve all left me._

It is a familiar refrain but not a welcome one; she knows it well, oh yes, this litany of grief made new. She never thought to add Jon. Even when he returned to Winterfell, heart in his eyes when he looked at the Dragon Queen, he was still family. Still hers.

He still came back.

 _Hush_ , she tells the howl. _I am a queen. Queens have no time for grief._ If she believes it, it is only because there is no one left in Winterfell who knows her well enough to name her a liar.

 

 

 

 

She is the Stark in Winterfell. There is work to be done, so she does it.

They burn their dead. They rebuild the shattered walls, organize what is left of the grain stores. Precious little remains, and none of the glass gardens of her childhood still stand. The Long Night may be over, but winter is still here. Ragged clouds blot out the weak sun, bringing snow and ice with them. On the rare days the sky is clear, the temperature plunges dangerously, so cold that even the warmest furs no longer suffice and the air itself turns to knives with every breath. It is the worst winter anyone has ever seen.

Sam, a good man but only half a maester, cannot even begin to guess how long it will last. Neither can her bannermen, nor any of the few elders who remain among the smallfolk. Bran, if he knows, says nothing. So Sansa closes her eyes against the pain for one breath, two, and picks up her quill. She writes to the Vale, reminding Sweetrobin—a man grown now—how kind she was, how patient and helpful, how cleverly she rid him of Petyr’s nasty influence. Her penmanship is delicate and perfect as she beggars herself for grain from the Vale’s vast stores, glass to rebuild the winter gardens, bolts of cloth for cloaks and blankets, gold to pay the crofters and craftsman.

When the ink has dried and the raven taken flight, she steels herself once more and heads to the godswood. Bran spends his days there, lost in greensight, as if nothing but the weirwoods matter. He stays beneath the branches of the heart tree during even the worst of the storms, like some being of old magic wearing her brother for a mask. Bran is— Bran has begun to scare her. His eyes are milky white now, and he does not feel the cold. Two moons ago her castellan came to her, wringing his hands and stuttering apologies.

_I’m sorry, Your Grace. He… he unnerves the men. Not a one of them feels safe in the godswood with him anymore._

Brienne would swallow her fear and deal with him, but Sansa recognizes the edge of despair in her eyes; she won’t let her friend turn herself to a martyr. Brienne has enough grief without taking on any of Sansa’s.

And so now, when night falls, Sansa is the one who must face Bran, who must wrestle his chair through the deep snow, dragging him away from the heart of his power.

His face is turned to the sky when she reaches him, bloodless and dusted with snow. Ice glitters on his lashes. She never laid eyes on a white walker, but she heard about them in Old Nan’s stories, listened to the hushed whispers of the wildlings who saw them and managed to escape with their lives. The figure before her—pale, inhuman, made of ice and snow and cold—is far too close to such descriptions for comfort.

_He is my brother. I must remember that._

When she speaks, her voice betrays none of the fear taking root in her heart. “I sent a raven to the Vale.”

No response.

Even with the heat of the hot springs to warm it, the godswood is as bitterly cold as the rest of the North. It is not yet evening, but already shadows creep across the snow. Night will be upon them soon.

“Come,” she sighs. “You’ve lingered long enough today.” Through the fur and leather of her gloves, the handles of his chair are cold enough to burn. She shuts out the pain and pushes forward toward the castle.

A thin rime of frost gathers on her sleeves, creeping up her arms and reaching for her heart. Ice crusts the hems of her dress and her cloak. Bran says nothing as they reach the keep, silent all the long way to his rooms. What must it be like to care so little for the world around you? No fear for your family, for your people, or even yourself? _Surely it is a mask_ , she tells herself. But a mask for what? Each time she looks, she finds less and less of her brother beneath the indifference.

Her eyes sting as she eases out of his rooms, her heart aching for someone to share this burden. But there is no one. Old Nan, her father, Uncle Benjen; anyone who might know the lore of her childhood is dead or gone. Arya wanders still, and Jon—

She blinks away the threat of tears with the ease of long practice, abruptly furious. Jon may well be a ghost in truth. No word, no sightings. Months since the Dragon Queen fell and still, he has not come home. She wants to believe that this abandonment is temporary, but the emptiness in her heart knows better. It makes her want to rage. 

_Have we learned nothing? The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. We should be together, all of us, at Winterfell. I shouldn’t be here alone, not again—_

But she is the Queen in the North, and she has a duty to her people. She cannot cede to her feelings; she must be better than that. She breathes deep and imagines her rage turned to ice, glacial and unyielding, pale as the sky and twice as wide. Slowly, it freezes into her bones, winter-cold, armor against her own worst impulses. When she can think past the howling, she closes the door to Bran’s chambers with a soft click.

_I am the Stark in Winterfell. I know my duty._

 

 

 

 

Sweetrobin, of all people, does not disappoint her. Wagons arrive from the Vale, struggling through the heavy snows, laden with everything she requested. She’ll pay for this for years, she knows, but at the moment she cannot bring herself to care. For now, her people won’t starve. They won’t freeze. The cost can wait.

She puts the able-bodied to work laying the foundations for the new glass gardens, drawing up a schedule with Sam that has them working in shifts, never staying out too long in the deadly cold. She sits with those who cannot work outside, sewing endlessly: cloaks, blankets, gloves, hats— anything at all that can be used to stay warm.

It is difficult work. Sansa is used to it, but many are not as practiced as she, and they struggle with their stitches in the dim light. She orders more candles lit, and does not let herself wince at how quickly their reserves dwindle; she should have asked Sweetrobin for tallow. No, the grain and glass and cloth were more critical. They can make do with the weak daylight if the supply doesn’t hold, and they’ll have their fires. Wood is the one precious resource they have in abundance.

In some ways, the endless work is a blessing; she is often too worn for fear when she enters the godswood to collect Bran, too worn for dreams when she falls into bed a bare few hours before dawn.

In the brief moments before sleep claims her, she thinks she hears a ghost howling in the wolfswood.

 _No_ , she thinks, the word rattling through her, falling like a stone into the dark emptiness inside her chest. _It is only the wind._

 

 

 

 

Slowly, the glass gardens come together. They plant their hardiest stock and pray for enough sunlight to let the seeds take root. Everywhere she goes, the castle echoes with whispered prayers. Some of the hardier folk visit the godswood at night after Sansa has taken her brother back to the keep, but most cannot stand the cold. Sansa prays to the heart tree in their stead, wretched and freezing as she kneels in the snow.

Even frozen, the weirwood sap looks like blood, red tears carved into pale cheeks.

_The old gods demand blood. That is why their trees weep red._

Old Nan’s voice swims out of memory. Sansa remembers dismissing such things as a child, more enamoured of her mother’s Southron gods, the gentle beauty of the Maiden, the chivalrous dignity of the Warrior. Held fast in the snows of the worst winter she’s ever seen, those gods are distant and powerless. The North belongs to the old gods, and the old gods demand blood.

They have not been able to send hunting parties out for weeks now; she has nothing to offer the gods from their larder, and she will not ask her people to bleed. Instead, she fumbles with numb hands for the knife she carries with her.

A silence falls over the godswood as she strips off her gloves and reaches for her hair. Even the wind holds its breath. She does not stop to think on it: one swift cut, and a shining lock of hair falls to the ground before the heart tree. It gleams against the snow like bloodied copper.

 _Let it suffice_ , she prays.

The wind starts up again, but the old gods are not the only ones to answer. Bran’s voice cuts into her like a knife.

“The wolves have come again,” says the thing wearing her brother’s face. “There is no need for prayer.”

_He is my brother, he is my brother—_

“There is every need,” she says, voice calm as frozen water.

She slips her gloves back on, keeps her expression blank although she can no longer feel her fingers. She should leave Bran to his greenseeing and his callousness. She should collect her thoughts and come back for him in the evening. Instead, she hauls herself to her feet, her whole body numb and unsteady, and forces herself to walk to Bran. Even through the numbness, the chair still burns.

“Leave me,” he starts, but she does not let him finish.

“Evening comes earlier every day now, brother. It’s time we head back to the keep.”

 

 

 

 

_He is my brother_ , she tells herself again and again, another phrase to haunt her heart. _He is my brother, he is my brother, he is my brother_ and _take care of our family—_

The refrain echoes through her as she goes about her work—wringing use from every bit of daylight, every inch of tallow—mingling with the prayers that fill the keep like ghosts. It is meltwater beneath the frozen glacier of her anger; she is the Stark in Winterfell, the Queen in the North, bound by blood and choice to the old gods, but she is alone.

Is this how her mother felt beneath her Southron courtesies, so desperately, terribly alone? Sansa thinks of her mother often these days as she toils beneath the yoke of winter. Perhaps she is still too much a Tully, longing for family before all else, before duty or honor.

And yet, her Tully hair looked red as weirdwood sap against the snow.

“I hate this,” she whispers to a mother who can no longer hear her. Catelyn Tully Stark is dead and gone, and Sansa is alone. “I hate this loneliness.”

But a wolf without a pack is still a wolf, and winter is here. There is always more work, and she has more important things to ask of the old gods than an end to loneliness.

The refrain repeats, endless and aching. The castle keeps whispering.

Sansa puts aside thoughts of her lost family and carries on.

 

 

 

 

The next time she prays, the old gods send a winter hare, white as snow and plump with health. She slits its throat with a single swift stroke, watches with a fierce, fragile hope as its blood paints the base of the heart tree.

_Help me keep my people alive. Help me keep them warm and fed and safe from harm._

The wind swirls around her, the branches of the weirwoods creaking with each gust. The old gods have heard her plea.

Bran says nothing.

Thankful, she leaves him there until evening falls in truth. She’s halfway across the godswood when it happens. Ice cracks and groans beneath her feet, and her hair flares out behind her as she stumbles. For a brief moment, the shroud of indifference clears and her brother stares out at her, eyes wide and terrified and so horribly, horribly young.

She rights herself, already reaching for him. “Bran—”

He’s gone before his name leaves her mouth. She stares again into a blank face, devoid of emotion.

 _Come back_ , she wants to beg, but she bites viciously at her cheek, blood spilling hot and bitter across her tongue as she forces herself to stay silent. Whatever is before her is not Bran; she cannot let it know that she knows.

“Let’s get you to your rooms.” Her voice is calm and pleasant; utterly bland. She is back in King’s Landing, back in the Eyrie, acting a part as if her very life depends upon it.

Somehow, she makes it back to Bran’s chambers without incident, leaves his empty gaze and unnerving silence behind. Safe in her own rooms, she locks the door with steady hands. One breath, two, and then she begins to shake. Her knees give way, and she collapses to the flagstones, bones aching against the cold stone. She feels frozen from the inside out; she cannot summon the strength to get up.

Sansa stays crumpled on the floor for long minutes. Brienne walks by on her nightly rounds, pausing before Sansa’s door before continuing on. Around her, the castle readies itself for sleep. There is work to do. She should gather herself and do it—mend and sew and tally their stores—but instead, it is all she can do to stand and lurch toward her bed. She crawls beneath the bed furs fully clothed, arms wrapped around herself to ward off a chill that has nothing to do with winter.

 _I don’t want to be alone_ , she thinks desperately, like a sob, like a prayer. _I can’t do this on my own._ But she is alone, and she must, so come the morning she will. She closes her eyes and wills away the memory of her little brother’s terror, reaching for the oblivion of sleep.

Blackness rushes over her like a tide, and for the first time in weeks, she finds no peace in it.

 

 

 

 

_Come back, come back, come back come—_

Wind shreds through her dreams, harsh and bitter, knifing through her to rattle the bare branches of distant trees. The godswood?

A raven laughs at her from the high boughs of a heart tree. It is an ugly sound, painful and grating. She wants to shout at the bird—larger than it should be, an unnerving intelligence in its gaze—but her mouth is full of blood.

 _Come back, come back_ , the raven jeers in her brother’s voice. _Come back!_

The refrain dissolves into laughter as she struggles to swallow. There are curses heavy on her tongue, words in an old language that sounds like the snarling of some fell beast, older than men, older than gods. She wants to spit them at the bird, but still she cannot speak—

The last thing she hears before the dream splinters into nothingness is the wind, howling a reply like wolfsong.

_Come back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot BELIEVE i'm out here trying to fix show!canon. should have known it would involve blood magic :/
> 
> anyway, it's fine, this is all jacy's fault 
> 
> title from "winter field" by bat for lashes
> 
> [rebloggable](https://redbelles.tumblr.com/post/185075930173/our-hands-are-cold-the-moon-sets-low) on tumblr; feel free to come yell at/with me about this disaster of a show


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes with a scream stuck in her throat, feral and furious, anger howling through her veins like a winter wind.

_Dreams_ , she tells herself. _Dreams, and nothing more._

Yesterday’s clothes bite into her skin, twisted about her from restless sleep. She strips them off with steady hands, refusing to let herself shake. It was just a dream, and she has work to do. Even so, she cannot escape the cold. A thin crust of ice floats atop the water in her basin. She pushes through it with hands that still ache from long hours in the godswood. She’ll have to add another log to the fire come nightfall. She ignores the cold, ignores the ache, wills the remnants of the dream away.

She breaks her fast in the great hall, struggling through a simple meal of dark bread and salted meat. It is filling, but all she can taste is blood. Her cheek throbs, a dull pain that beats in time with her heart.

Bran has not taken meals with them in months; she cannot remember the last time she saw him eat. The thought lodges in her chest like a knife slipped between the cage of her ribs. How could she have failed him so badly?

She forces herself to finish her meal; even now, caught in the grip of her guilt, she cannot bring herself to waste a bite. Half-sick, she goes to Sam, asking for a word in private. He leaves his plate to Gilly and follows her without a moment’s hesitation. Sam is so loyal, so kind, and now it seems she will never be able to thank Jon for bringing him to Winterfell.

_Enough_. She pushes the thought away and reaches instead for the door to the courtyard. Sam follows, bewildered.

“Not your solar?”

“No,” she tells him. “Not there.”

Bran sees so much these days, through the trees and the birds and gods alone know what else. There is only one place she can think to speak to Sam unobserved.

It feels wrong to bring an outsider into the crypts, but her feelings don’t matter. The thick stone walls and sheltering darkness are her only hope to avoid Bran’s gaze. The eyes of long-dead Starks stare out at her, judging, as she leads Sam deep and deeper through the corridors, but those gazes she can bear. They continue until the Lords of Winterfell give way to the Kings of Winter with their swords and crowns of iron, icy and implacable even in death.

“Your Grace,” Sam says when she finally comes to a halt. She is too caught in her worry to correct him as she usually does. Instead—

“You’ve studied the lore of the North.”

“What? Ah, yes?”

“The old gods. The heroes and monsters of the First Men, and the children of the forest before them. White walkers, blood magic, greenseeing; you know where to look to find these tales.”

In the flickering light of her torch, she can see the hidden vein of strength that makes up Samwell Tarly. The man before her unraveled a secret that rent the realm in two, that fooled everyone for years. The man before her slew a white walker. For a moment, he is still as stone, and then the confusion on his face gives way to something that looks very much like fear.

“This is about Bran.”

Silence falls between them, thick and heavy as the snows outside. The Kings of Winter look on, impassive. Her breath clouds around her in an icy mist, waiting, waiting. Once she gives her answer, she cannot call it back.

“Yes,” she says, and the word scythes through the darkness like wind.

 

 

 

 

The day is pale and gray when she emerges from the crypts. She goes about her duties as she always does, but this time, when hunger curls in her belly, she does not ignore it to forge ahead with her duties. Instead, she talks quietly to one of the women from the winter town, a woods witch who knows something of herbs and remedies.

If Bran is surprised to see her before evening has settled with across the godswood, no sign of it shows on his face. She’s come with a purpose. Tucked into a small cloth bundle at her side is bread soaked to softness in warm broth, the barest sliver of cheese, slices from a rare winter apple— food to nourish a starving body.

_Meat will make him sick_ , the woods witch told her. It is a cruel trick: go hungry too long, and the body will starve even when presented with a feast. Small bits of simple foods, slowly, slowly. That is the only way, and even then, it is not sure.

“You missed breakfast this morning.” Her tone is deliberately chiding, an older sister scolding a foolish younger brother. It is a tone she has not used in years. He stares at her for a moment, ignoring the bundle in her outstretched hand, but she keeps her expression placid. White eyes search her face and find nothing there that Sansa does not want them to find.

A long moment passes, and then—

_Oh,_ she thinks as he reaches for the food, _oh, Bran, how could I have failed you so badly?_

He moves so little these days, gestures so infrequently, always covered in heavy furs—

Her brother’s body is skeletal. Gaunt and starved and sharp, so sharp that she feels her expression begin to crack with horror.

_Don’t look away._

The man before her seems more dead than living flesh, wasted away nearly to nothing. Wizened fingers take the bundle from her and she’s half afraid the bones will snap with the weight.

“Thank you, sister.”

It is a dismissal, obvious as the creeping dark. She does not acknowledge it. If she leaves now, he won’t eat and gods—

She was never a protector. That was Robb, always. Arya, even. Jon. Sansa was too much the little lady, caught up in her songs and courtesies, so sure she was meant for a gentle life in the South. Sheltered, ignorant.

But Bran is dying, and there is no one left to protect him but Sansa. No Robb, no Arya. No Jon. If she must spend hours in the freezing cold prodding him to eat—to live—then that is what she will do.

“Go on,” she tells him. “Break your fast. We’ll leave after I pray.”

 

 

 

 

Full dark has fallen by the time she leaves the godswood. Sam would fuss over her if he knew, but he is buried in his research and she is loath to disturb him. She soaks her frozen hands in warm water until sensation begins to return, distant at first and then a roaring, burning pain.

Her hands are not the only thing that aches. Her heart is heavy that night, sorrow and guilt and fear, and fear, and fear. Huddled beneath the bed furs, she tamps down her thoughts and hopes for empty sleep. The dream comes again instead, the wind and the bird, the blood and the howling.

She finds no peace in sleep, no relief in dawn. It is a new and terrible pattern: when she is not at her work, she is in the godswood coaxing Bran’s body to eat. When she collapses into bed, the dream is there, waiting. Perhaps it would be bearable if she were not alone, but she is, oh, she is. Her family is gone. Those few who remain—her sworn sword and her maester—cannot help her. Brienne labors under the weight of her own sorrow, and Sam has already shouldered enough of Sansa’s worries. She will not trouble him with more.

_I am a Stark. I can be brave._ The mantra once gave her such strength, but it is no shield against dreams, no balm for loneliness.

_Come back_ , her dreams whisper. _Come back, come back._

The wound in her cheek has not healed. It throbs each time she speaks, burns each time she eats or drinks. She pays it no heed; it is merely one more ache to bear.

_Come back—_

 

 

 

 

The days unspool like a threadbare cloak, a slow unwinding that eats away at her heart and leaves her open to the cold. It matters less than the other problems she faces, and so she ignores it. She saves her care for bigger things: the glass gardens, still barren, and the pinch of hunger on every face she sees.

In between bouts of research, Sam tells her that perhaps they simply need more time.

“We don’t know how long it will take the seeds to waken. Not in temperatures like this, and with so little light.”

Guesses won’t fill empty bellies. She rations the grain from the Vale even more cautiously, cuts the portions of salted meat nearly in half. If only the cold would relent long enough to send out a hunting party. A day, a few hours even—

She prays on it, kneeling in the snow until every inch of her is numb and burning, warmth a memory she can no longer even begin to conjure. She staggers to her feet, frozen and aching. Bran has barely finished the midday meal, and already the sun is slipping below the horizon.

_This winter will kill us_ , she thinks, distant and surreal. _We survived the Night King, but the cold will kill us all._

The godswood is silent save for the creaking wood of Bran’s chair and the brittle crunch of snow as she stumbles through it. No rabbit to sacrifice, no wind to answer her desperate prayers. She does not allow herself to think on it; she does not have the luxury of despair, not when her people are starving. Not when the snows fall and the white winds blow.

The saying drifts through her mind in her father’s voice, as it always does. Eddard Stark’s words spark inside her like kindling, the barest hint of warmth to hold against the endless winter. Sansa is a Stark, a wolf, a queen. She will endure, and her people with her. She will make sure of it.

She works late into the night, drafting plans with fingers still half-frozen from her long hours of prayer in the godswood. Sam’s face twists with pity when he sees her, but he says nothing, merely brings her a salve that smells sharp and darkly green, a precious concoction of yarrow and comfrey and half a dozen other herbs she cannot name. It helps more than she cares to admit. He leaves the jar with her when he retreats from her solar.

Half-empty already, the small pot mocks her from her bedside as she readies herself for sleep, wrapping thin strips of soft linen around her fingers to help them heal. The smell is deceptive: the salve is a deep red, and thick as winter sap. The color is from the yarrow, of course, but she cannot help but think of the weirwoods. Her mouth tastes of blood.

The iron tang of it thickens on her tongue as her eyes grow heavy with sleep. Her thoughts fall away, mind gone cloudy with exhaustion. Already, she dreads the dream. She is so tired, so terribly worn. She wants to plead, wants to beg, but it is no use: the godswood looms before her as she closes her eyes, the heart tree bleeding and bleeding—

 

 

 

 

The wind howls around her like a gale, howling, howling, loud enough to drown out the taunt of crowsong. The raven is still there, still jeering, but she cannot hear it over the cry of the wind.

_No_ , the trees whisper. _Not the wind._

Her bones ache with the cold. Her mouth is still heavy with blood; she can feel the red of it staining her teeth. It pulses like a heart. She wants to gag, but wills away the urge. Unbidden, the knowledge shivers in the back of her mind as she struggles for breath: she cannot waste her prayers. She forces herself to focus. Not the wind?

_Not the wind, not the wind, not the wind—_

The whispers die away as she realizes. It is not wind: it is a wolf, howling, howling—

_Oh_ , she thinks, tears pricking her eyes, dripping down her cheeks to freeze against her skin like sap. She has never heard this voice before; she would know this voice anywhere.

_Ghost_ , says her heart. Blood slides down her throat in a hot rush. _Ghost—_

Her vision blurs and shifts, and there he is, the ghost wolf she dreamed of in the Eyrie, big as mountains. His eyes are red as weirwood sap, red as blood, and staring out from them is a wolf of a different sort, but a wolf all the same.

_Jon._

The word echoes over the howl, cutting through it like a knife through the darkness.

_Come back_ , she says without thought, without hesitation. _Come back, come back—_

 

 

 

 

She wakes with tear tracks on her cheeks and howling like a song in her heart.

The linen unraveled during the night: the salve has smeared across her cheeks and neck. In the watery reflection of her mother’s old mirror, she looks like something out of Old Nan’s stories. She looks like a witch, like a woman marked by the old gods.

_Foolish little dove._ Memory chides her in Cersei’s sweet tones, in Petyr’s. Ramsay’s.

Sansa ignores the voices of her past. She fills her mind with wind, blood, wolfsong. Power surges through her veins, ancient and terrifying, but she refuses to cower before it. Each thought feels jagged and sharp. Perhaps she has finally gone mad, splintered beneath the weight of winter and her own desperation, become a broken mirror reflecting all her childhood songs in strange and bloody patterns. If that is true, she cannot bring herself to care.

She thinks of Ghost’s howl, a sound she’s yearned to hear for ages, ever since she lost Lady. Since she was a bastard, hiding in the mountains and dreaming of wolves. _Just like Jon_. She thinks of the boy she grew up with and the man he’s become, dark hair and solemn face and kind eyes. Sadness, scars, and always that deep well of kindness, vast as the snows of the North and twice as fierce.

_Come back_ , she thinks. Once, twice, again, again, again. Her voice rings out in the still quiet of her chambers, every ounce of her will turning the words to steel, turning them to wind. She knows without knowing that he hears them.

The command tastes like blood: “Come back.”

Seven days later, he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks at new chapter count*
> 
> i'm fine. everything's perfectly all right now. we're fine. we're all fine here, now, thank you. how are you? 
> 
> /sobs


End file.
